His rival, Tofa, polled 5,, votes, representing Only three states each returned more than 1 million votes, all southern: Lagos, Rivers now Rivers and Bayelsa and Ondo. Abiola received his highest votes from Lagos state.
He smiled home with , Ondo State now Ondo and Ekiti delivered a total of , votes, which gave Lagos a good run for its money. Many Nigerians are of the opinion that June 12 should be a national holiday.
The date is celebrated in honour of an annulled presidential election in June 12, However, only some Nigerian states actually celebrate it. The election was annulled by Ibrahim Babangida, because of alleged evidence that they were corrupt and unfair, a development that ushered in a political crisis that led to General Sani Abacha seizing power later that year.
In , Abiola declared himself the lawful president of Nigeria in the Epetedo area of Lagos island, an area mainly dominated by Lagos Indigenes, after he returned from a trip to solicit the support of the international community for his mandate. After declaring himself president he was declared wanted and was accused of treason and arrested on the orders of military President General Sani Abacha, who sent police vehicles to bring him into custody.
Abiola died on July 7, on the day he was due to be released from incarceration under suspicious circumstances shortly after the death of General Abacha. These governing bodies were designed to exist until democratic elections could be held to choose a president. The NEC banned previous candidates and parties from campaigning, and so the long process began. The results clearly showed Abiola to be the winner.
Babangida, wishing to continue military rule, petitioned the High Court to delay the elections, and on June 16 the announcement of the results was postponed. In defiance of the court order, a group called Campaign for Democracy released the election results, declaring Abiola to be the winner, with 19 of 30 states supporting him.
Less than a week later the NDSC voided the election, supposedly to protect the legal system and the judiciary from being ridiculed both nationally and internationally.
Both the U. Abiola, believing himself to have been given a mandate from the voters, joined the Campaign for Democracy in calling for voters to perform acts of civil disobedience in an attempt to force the election results to stand.
In response, Major Babangida used the authority he still retained to ban both Abiola and Tofa from participating in any new elections. On July 6, , Nigerian leaders demanded that both parties agree to participate in an interim national government. They reluctantly agreed and, on July 16, plans were announced for a new election, but immediately abandoned. He stepped down on the day before the new government took effect, handing power over to a preferred loyalist, Chief Shonekan.
Nigerians supporting Abiola demanded that power be turned over to him as the rightful winner of the original election. That election was considered by many to have been the cleanest in Nigeria's history and was praised as a concerted effort to overcome ethnic and religious divisions throughout the country. Olukoshi, a professor at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs in Lagos, commented on the election and the majority win by Abiola, saying "Abiola allowed us to rise above ethnic and religious differences … this was the first time a Yoruba has been able to win votes both in the east and the north.
Throughout August , Nigeria was paralyzed by strikes and unrest, and came almost to a standstill. Abiola remained abroad for several months, finally returning to Nigeria at the end of the year.
Resentment against the military grew during the first part of During the constitutional conference of May 23, the Campaign for Democracy called for a boycott of elections, demanding that the military return power to Abiola, the presumed winner of the prior year elections. On June 11, , after declaring himself to be president before a group of 3,, Abiola went into hiding. He called for an uprising to force the military to recognize the vote. The military, conducting a nationwide hunt, arrested him on June The following day, 1, demonstrators marched on Lagos to demand Abiola's release.
By July, a war of attrition by Nobel Prize winner, Wole Soyinka, was launched against the government. In response, the military charged Abiola with treason. Your browser Internet Explorer 7 or lower is out of date. It has known security flaws and may not display all features of this and other websites.
Learn how to update your browser. In June , Chief Moshood M. Abiola, a Muslim businessman and philanthropist, ran for the presidency of Nigeria and appeared to win the popular vote in what was considered a free and fair election. When Abiola rallied support to claim the presidency, he was arrested for treason by the military regime led by General Sani Abacha and sent to prison for four years.
Religious and human rights activists from across the globe called for his release. In June , General Abacha was found dead under mysterious circumstances. One month later, on the day that Abiola was to be released from prison, he met with a U. During the July 7 meeting Abiola suddenly became ill, collapsed and later died in a hospital. Some claimed he had been poisoned by members of the U.
Others said he had been beaten. Autopsy results showed he had died of massive heart failure. In an interview with Charles Stuart Kennedy in April , Thomas Pickering offered a first-hand account of the incident and its aftermath.
Please follow the links to learn more about Africa , political assassinations , or Thomas Pickering. In the spring of , as Under Secretary [for Political Affairs], I had planned a visit to Nigeria probably in early summer.
I had applied for a visa, and General Sani Abacha, the last of the military coup guys, was still in charge. We were going out to see whether we could get the Nigerians to straighten up and behave or at least become more responsible. A General [Abdulsalami] Abubakar took over, a northerner, someone we had known, of good reputation. It was obvious that the military had enough of Sani Abacha and his type and at last felt that it was time to straighten out and move toward elected civil government.
We took that as a good signal and again we asked to come out, and in two months we went out with a visa…. He had, according to some vote counts, actually won the election and then been incarcerated by Abacha. He was a Muslim from Lagos, a Yoruba, with a newspaper empire as well as other entrepreneurial adventures…. Sani Abacha had become president when he in effect stole the government after an election in which my friend Chief Abiola … had been elected.
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